bluwe

I suppose it makes sense if yield really matters in the long run. To me, it seems that the only thing that this strategy protects against is having to send more acceptances and field more declined offers, but so what? Everyone knows about the April 15th deadline, so it's not like a student that hasn't heard back from their (remaining) first choice school X is going to accept some other school Y's offer, before X can put an offer in front of them. Unless there's some administrative reason that ad coms are encouraged to filter applications like that, then it seems you can still get this student to go to X so long as that offer is in front of them by the 15th of April, with, seemingly, no long term loss (i.e., the students that are most qualified and fit the best at the program enroll there). I'm not sure what is lost in adopting this strategy, but I do know what is gained: more anxiety for applicants as some of us infer rejection from school(s) we thought we had a relatively good chance at getting into--all the while looking down the road to programs where prospects of admission are much lower.

Does this really happen? It really doesn't make sense to me that a program would just assume that a person is not desirable to study at their program because they seem overqualified to study at that program.

I contacted Minnesota and it sounds like if you haven't heard back, then that's a rejection. Granted, this is the text of the email: "Notifications for the offers of admission and the wait list have gone out. " This was in response to my inquiry whether apps are still under review, so the only reading consistent with my question also being addressed is that its rejection. However, it is not totally clear to me, so I'll just wait for the notification email that historically never comes.

Well at least it sounds like no communication doesn't mean rejection at this point. If they were just offered standard funding then I'd be worried.

Rejected by Northwestern and tbh I don't really care.

Thanks! Any luck?

What sort of funding did they get?

I've heard the same from others, but I personally have not heard back. I'm trying to figure out the logic of releasing waitlists before acceptances and rejections. How do you know the applicants that are waitlisted if you don't already have a list of acceptances, minimally?

I was offered TAship, and know another person that was as well. Of course, we won't get around to knowing whether we will accept them until the other results begin to come in.

Yeah I did one too and can tell you that is why I gave the response I did.

I've heard that terminal MA programs are like this. Imagine a department filled with people who are battling (essentially) for the opportunity to get into a Ph.D. program that more or less guarantees you a job at the end of your Ph.D. So, does some crazy stuff happen that you'd rather not happen? Yeah, but if you want to be a contender for top programs and thus an academic job, you absolutely need to strategize and game out your moves. Does this mean you need to participate in the viciousness? No, but you must take it into account during your strategizing, and, depending on your program, it may very well require you to participate depending on your assessment of your particular state of affairs. It really is horrible, but if you don't recognize this, then you will not succeed unless you get lucky or your writing sample solves some long-standing philosophical problem.

I mean, why not pick some other arbitrary metric to use rather than the GRE? It's useless and expensive. You could get better results if you flipped a coin for every application. There, I solved the problem. Now every department can cut half, and under this scheme, every applicant has .5 chance of making it past the arbitrary filter. So, while 50% of applicants are still victims of chance, and laziness on the part of departments reviewing applications, we can say that no person is treated differently based on this arbitrary filter. I suppose that's the proper way to treat applicants who are trying to compete, not just for PhD spots, but, by proxy, for a job in academia afterward. I suppose that is how we deserve our applications to be reviewed, even though nearly every application fee is just a blatant cash grab. $125 to Stanford for, what, a 3% chance of getting in? And on top of that, that 3% is not necessarily found through careful review of every applicant's file--it might be based on a useless test that the applicant took 0-5 years ago. Nothing against Stanford, by the way, it just has the most egregious application fee that I saw.

Probably a year and a half. I don't have any idea how many hours.

https://www.change.org/p/individual-graduate-programs-universal-elimination-of-gre-score-consideration-for-graduate-philosophy-admission?utm_medium=email Here's a petition that you all should sign to bring awareness to the harmful consequences of requiring the GRE for applicants. Or discuss the GRE requirement here. Share this link if you want to see change, which has to come from within individual departments.

I like those odds.

If your application is great minus your GPA (and yours isn't bad, just not great) and GREs, I think you still have a great app. The only question is whether there are people with apps better than yours, or equal to yours with better GPA/GRE. That's likely when it will matter most. So, polish the writing sample and try to do things that you can use to buff up your CV, SoP, and then, if you get it as good as you can, your GPA just won't matter (so long as it actually isn't terrible--people on this forum don't know what a terrible GPA actually looks like). And if it does, you just got unlucky. I don't know how often adcoms actually have two apps that they think are equal in quality and have to go to the GPA/GRE to make a decision, but I don't think it's too often. Prioritize Writing sample, Statement of purpose (prove you're a match to the program), CV. My experience with GPA/GRE, beyond what I said above, was just a check that both crossed a certain threshold, then after is the real review process. Additionally, cumulative GPA might not even matter for many programs.

What do you mean by this?

Anything come of the half fund available?

I'm a Philosophy/Psych double major. Though my primary focus is on philosophy. The reason I am a little skeptical of the funding situation is that if funding is chosen on merit, for example if the program has a limited number of TA ships, I'm probably not going to be chosen given that many top students apply to these programs incase they get rejected from all PhD programs. I didn't do great my first two years given I was as aimless as they get, but, although I've drastically improved, I'm not ignoring the simple fact that I won't be as competitive as a vast majority of candidates GPA wise (overall GPA will probably be 3.0/major GPA will be 3.7ish). I haven't taken the GRE yet, which is one of the reasons why I'm looking at the Canadian programs so seriously. That and they're only 1 year long. But I think I'll do well on the GRE, I just won't have really any time to prepare.

I'm planning on applying to M.A. programs this January. Only problem is I don't know which programs to apply to. I've got a few Canadian programs on the list: Queen's, Victoria, Toronto and two American programs so far: Houston and Syracuse. The only problem is I really don't know how competitive any of these master's programs really are, so I don't know whether I'm taking a risk by only applying to these programs. I figure no matter the competitive nature of these programs, I'm still taking some sort of risk. I'm wondering what other programs I should consider. I've seen the PGR and I'm considering some of those programs, however funding looks scarce, and I'm quite skeptical of the list. (Sure, those programs have great placement records, but is because there's something particularly special about these schools, or is it just because they admit the most promising students?) My goal in entering a masters program is to get into a top PhD program, and to go deeper into philosophy. My main topics of interest at this point are truth (epistemology in general), and Phil. of Religion, and Philosophy of Art. I know I must've left out some pertinent information, but I don't mind filling in the details if you think there's something that might help you in helping me out a bit. Thanks a lot everyone!